Fish Out of Water (15 page)

Looks that would have to do, for now. “Where are we going?”

He looked at me with a heady indigo smirk, parroting my words. “I can’t remember.”

An hour later we were at the surface.

The moon glittered becomingly on inky blue swell that was like soft glass as our faces broke the surface. He grinned at me like a child. “Remember how that feels?”

I couldn’t help but smile back. My limbs ached with exertion but my heart was zinging.

“I do now.”

“It gets better.”

“How?”

“Enough with the questions.” He held a still-warm finger to my lips before planting a strong hand either side of my waist and pirouetting me through the water like I was as dainty as a ballerina instead of a muscly deputy Sheriff from a place with no water.

I waited for him to say:
No-one puts Baby in the corner
.

But instead, he slowly turned me 180 degrees, and I saw where we were. Directly above the deepest place on earth. Further from land than most people have ever been. There was no distant glimpse of shore, no comforting horizon.

We were bobbing on a silver-blue blanket under the light of a zillion stars.

“Lie on your back.” Somehow he managed to say it without sounding creepy, or like an ob-gyn. He guided me gently but determinedly into a floating position as he spoke softly into my ear. “Can you see the stars?”

“Uh-huh.” I was a little worried I was sounding too syrupy, drugged by his touch and his voice and the soft lap of his breath at my ear. But I was too loose and warm to try harder.

He picked up a hand and trickled cold water onto my neck. “Can you feel the water, all around you?”

Feel it? I think I’m turning to water
. “Yes.” This time I was clearer. Because as he guided me through the sights and sensations I could feel myself coming alive again. I could feel the ocean caressing my skin in a way I had barely registered seven miles down.

He leaned closer to my neck, that toffee-tobacco voice barely more than the lowest whisper but warm and insistent against the sensitive skin of my ear. It shot straight to the centre of me. “Can you feel my arm around you?”

Oh yeah baby. “Uh-huh.” Back to being inarticulate as the possessive weight of that arm sent dizzy kicks all around my insides. I tried to not imagine the hardness of the rest of him.

“What else can you feel?” His whisper was so low it was hardly audible but it didn’t matter. I was like a tuning fork, responding to his commands.

I relaxed in the pose, as far as I could with his arm burning a white-hot hole against my side and his voice and breath stroking fire into my brain and between my legs.

“I can feel… something.” I tried harder to concentrate.
Ignore the hormones a moment and focus
. There was a subtle shift in the body of water below me, slow and low at first, and then quickening. Something was coming. Something big.

The turbulence in the water became unbearable, but he used that vice-like grip to hold me in place, only releasing me as I felt the water fracture in pieces around me. At that precise moment he lifted me bodily above his head, like Swan Lake on the high seas.

Or maybe
Dirty Dancing
.

All around me, the water danced and writhed and it took several seconds for my drugged senses to register what I was seeing. “The Dance of the Dolphins,” I finally realized, laughing down into his face like a three year old child. “It’s tonight?”

“Yes.” He laughed as well. “Come on!” His face was lit up with something so pure I suddenly saw him as he must have looked as a child, the first time he had ever been here, had ever seen this ritual. The force of the image knocked the breath out of me.

He threw me forward into the water and I took off, swimming, dancing and cavorting with a hundred thousand dolphins of the deep sea. Their silver grey hides flashing in the moonlight like fairy dust on their night of nights. As I swam, they circled closer, touching me with quicksilver caresses, alighting briefly in my brain with dolphin grace.

Magic made flesh.

As he caught up to me with a few clever strokes, he reached for my hand, and it felt too good. I reminded myself that I still didn’t know his name, and decided that even though this may have been truly a Kodak moment I needed to ask it before I went cavorting off with him.

But he was too quick with a question of his own. “Now?”

I shook my head in confusion, so caught up with my own thoughts, and with the joy and magic of the moment that I didn’t understand what he was asking.

Indigo eyes framed by wet lashes bored into me. “Back at the wedding I asked you what moves the rest of you. The parts that aren’t human. So.” He grinned at me like a schoolboy. “Tell me. Now do you remember?”

Evening: The Wedding

Lecanora blinked in surprise when I appeared beside her.

“Lecanora, I’m sorry,” I mumbled. I suspected the Princess could tell I was kind of confused about exactly which bits I was sorry about, but I did know I’d been making my way over to her when the wolf had waylaid me. And I hadn’t meant to disappear for so long.

Lucky Gadulan weddings were extended affairs.

“Worry not.” Lecanora’s hands twisted prettily in front of her. “May we speak now?”

I was about to say
hell yeah
when Mom joined us, greeting Lecanora with her customary warm embrace. “Hello, sea-daughter,” she said with a wry smile, using the ancient, but seldom-used greeting for beloved friends. “Are you well, recovered from the events of yesterday?”

Lecanora smiled nervously, nodding, and skittering anxiously on the spot. Lunia placed one hand around her waist and another over her heart, stilling her. “There is nothing to be nervous about here.”

The Princess closed her eyes and seemed to visible settle before my eyes. “Lunia, I am sorry.” She motioned to where I’d been sensing before my disappearance, hours before.

I felt an upswell of outrage and was about to remind them both I was there too.

Lunia laughed her musical tinkle. “Don’t be. Daughters are supposed to do things their mothers would prefer they didn’t.” She looked warmly into Lecanora’s eyes with her trademark twinkle as she continued. “But, you know, mothers often do things they shouldn’t as well.”

Mom kind of melted away as Lecanora took my hand and led me to a quiet place, where sea grass day-beds formed a private enclave away from the hustle and pry of Gadulan eyes.

Finally, we were alone.

Lecanora wrapped me in her Olympian’s embrace. It felt like coming home and I found myself collapsing into her. You know, at home I’m happy to wrap my arms around victims of all kinds of horrible stuff, squeeze them and lend some human warmth. I don’t judge them as sobs wrack their bodies through every kind of hell. But I never, ever let myself go.

I can’t. Not when people need me to be strong.

Sometimes it’s hard being different, and I never had anyone to share the burden with. Except beautiful, quirky Lecanora, who I figured always felt a little like me.

An outsider, even on the inside.

“Where did you go, Rania, you’ve been gone hours?” Concern dug lines into her face.

Oh no, I couldn’t talk about him. Not yet.

Lecanora looked far away, and sadder than I’d ever seen her. I knew by the change in her face she wasn’t thinking about my escapade with the beautiful merman any longer. “And why have you stayed away from Aegira so long? All these years?”

“Oh Norsha,” I sighed into her hair, using my childhood name for her. “It’s so good to see you.” This is what I really wanted to talk about right now. I wanted to make things right between us. “It’s been so long.” I wanted to break my promise to myself and tell her, even though I’d never told anybody about the prediction. “I had to… I had to stay away.”

What could I say? “I wanted to come back. Lots of times. But… but I just couldn’t. And now everything’s gone mad.” I looked at her and felt the old hurt. I was a teenager again. “I don’t know what happened. What did I do wrong to make you go cold on me?”

Lecanora covered her mouth at my words, and lowered her face. “Oh Ransha, Ransha,” she started, stroking my hair in a universal gesture of comfort. Apart from Mom, she’s the only one who ever calls me that. “It wasn’t you. You didn’t do anything.”

I remembered it so well. Things had started to get a little cool between me and my BFF when some of the other, younger mermaids started referring to me as
dirt-dweller
. They weren’t trying to be cruel, they were just stating fact. Sometimes they wouldn’t even say it. I would just see it lying there in their mind, a label without value. Like they’d say food, music,
fish
. I was always strong, even for a mermaid, and at twelve or thirteen I hadn’t quite learned to control my hot Sicilian temper. And it hurt, the things they said. So I kinda kicked some mermaid ass. Which, in retrospect, was unfair. After all, we can’t help what we think. And let’s face it, if land people could read my thoughts I’d never be out of the hospital.

As I came back to myself, I saw that Lecanora was crying. It’s the most beautiful thing. Did I mention it? Mermaids cry silver tears. I always figured it was so you could see them underwater. Glistening. “It was so hard here. I was trying to do the right things. And Kraken...”

That asshole. I shoulda known he’d have something to do with how distant Lecanora had been with me in the few years before I’d taken off. The guy’s been yanking her chain her whole life. Pull an orphaned girl out of the sea and make her a Princess and you think you own her.

I put my finger over her lips. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to tell me what he said. What he did.” I turned her face to mine and looked at her seriously, right in the eyes. “We’re good now, though. Right?”

She nodded, silver tears still streaming down her face. We rested like that a few moments, before she spoke again, and when she did, it was just like she was channeling my thoughts. “We’re different, Rania, you and I. I mean, different from them. You, of course. But me too. I know it inside. There’s something different about me too.”

I nodded. She’s right, I knew it. Always have.

“We must always stick together. From now on. We must always be… in the same pod.”

I laughed at the term, but felt sad inside that ‘always’ might only be a few weeks. “Well,” I smiled at her. “Let’s not get ideas above our station now…”

She laughed too. “I have no idea what that means. But I did see you talking to Rick. What was he saying?”

“Um…” Where to start? We needed to cover some ground before we leapt right into “find the hurting”. Luckily, she had moved on before she realized I hadn’t answered her. “And what did the girls want?” She motioned over to where Zali, Nidan and Tricoste were huddled, nervously conferring.

“The Throaty Three?”

Lecanora laughed again, that kooky trill that actually convinces some mermaids that she’s kind of ditzy, but is really just a sign her anxiety thing is going into overdrive. I was about to answer when we both became suddenly aware of the crowd slipping closer. I didn’t need to read their minds to know what they were thinking but I couldn’t resist a peek as they pressed closer, to see if I could catch any thoughts. But I only caught strays. One from a Sand Seeder who should know better, its pure, invisible energy picking up fine grains of the seabed and forming himself into a pinwheel with them, just for fun.

Hmmm, them again. It’s been a long time. Perhaps together they could stop him…

Another from Reiscalian child, staring at Lecanora and I, transfixed.

Mama says the Aegirans are our only hope. If they all perish, who will protect us?

Mental note to self. Stay out of heads. Times like these, eavesdroppers end up on Prozac.

I could see The Choirmaster, Zorax, push through the crowd towards us, and I was relieved. Along with the Triad, a handful of other positions make up the Aegiran leadership grouping. The Choirmaster is one, along with the Head Architect (sort of like Planning and Zoning back home) and The Healer (think Surgeon General).

I’d always liked Zorax. He reminded me a little of Santa Claus, twinkly eyes and red cheeks. And there was something else about him. He seemed almost as old as Imd, somehow.

Like he knew things, secrets.

“Zorax,” I smiled, touching his eyelids with my fingers.

“Rania,” he responded. “How is the girl of the golden voice?”

“Tired,” I said, trying not to think about dolphins. I remembered my manners. “But pleased, as ever, to be back in paradise.”
Busy, you know. Visions, world saving. Yada yada
.

He laughed, and I knew that he could tell my line was just that. “I can see that you and the Princess have a lot to talk about.” He nodded and made a sign of peace over Lecanora. “I won’t hold you. I trust the girls asked you to come by, lend us your expertise…” He was asking like it was good manners, but I was used to undercurrents, and I knew there was more. He was fishing, trying to find out what the Throaty Three were talking to me about.

What the hell was going on here?

I acted like I had no idea what he was talking about. “Actually,” I whispered conspiratorially, “They were after cop stories. You know how girls love gossip.”

Zorax laughed, and I was almost sure I imagined it, but I detected a quick shimmer of relief skate across his jolly face. He embraced me one last time before moving off, and Lecanora and I picked up again. I was pretty sure we couldn’t be overheard, but I zoomed in to a private place in her brain, a place I knew no random passing royal-watchers could access.

Okay. So. The Throaty Three? Well, they wanted to know about my work
.

Lecanora’s heavenly face puckered a little in confusion.
Your investigative work? Protecting people in Dirtwater?

I shrugged.
Well, you make it sound kind of grand, but yeah, that. The cop thing
.

She frowned.
Did they say why they were asking?

Well, they started asking whether I knew about the soloist, Imogen
.